Shirley Murphy: Cat Raise the Dead

"Search warrant," Joe said softly.

"I hope Renet hasn't already cleared out all the evidence, every necklace and bracelet. We could go down there, distract her. Give Harper a chance to search. We can just drop down onto her balcony and-"

"Yeah, right. We could do that."

"But…"

"I've had enough of her. The woman's a fiend." Whatever bland, innocuous presence Renet managed to exude in the course of everyday living, she was a Jekyll and Hyde when it came to cats.

Dulcie nudged him, and he turned to look. Away behind them, across the upper hills, two more police cars were coming, making their way along a narrow, rutted back road. Behind them followed a dark, unmarked station wagon. The three vehicles turned downhill just above the grove, onto the dirt lane that bordered the cemetery on the far side, parking at the edge of the graves near the yellow police tape.

Four uniformed officers got out of the police units. The two men in dark suits who emerged from the station wagon each carried a backpack. Farther on, Harper's buckskin gelding, still tied to his tree, looked toward the men with interest. He didn't shy now; he was beautifully calm.

The six men stood talking beside the raw earth of Dolores Fernandez's grave, then moved on across the grove toward the patch of nearly invisible sod squares where Harper had found the doll, where he had left a yellow tape tied.

The two men in suits set down their packs and walked around the sod rectangle, then knelt to carefully probe at its edges. They worked at this for some time before one of the men fished a camera from his pack, adjusted some lens attachment, and began to take pictures.

Dulcie smiled with satisfaction, and settled more comfortably on the warm roof tiles. Joe yawned and curled down against the chimney in a patch of sun. When the photographer finished shooting pictures, both men walked the area, bending to pick up minute bits of evidence, dropping each into a little transparent bag. After some time, they produced long slim knives, working carefully at the sod, slipping the blades down into the hairline cracks. The cats were distracted only when two more cars came down the long drive: a black Lincoln and Adelina's pearl red Bentley, both vehicles squealing to a halt before the front door.

Car doors were flung open, two men in dark suits got out of the Lincoln, moving close to Adelina as she approached the house. At the same moment, as if she had been watching the drive, Renet slammed out the front door to join her sister. The cats could imagine phone calls from within, down to Casa Capri, could just picture Renet's panicked phone summons to Adelina. The two men had to be Adelina's attorneys.

From within the house, Max Harper appeared behind Renet. And as Renet and Adelina began to argue, the two men lit into Harper. They wanted to know what business he had bringing his police up here. They informed him that if he didn't leave at once, they'd have him in court.

"Lawyers," Joe said with disgust. "They'd better think again, if they plan to take Harper into court." He might rag Max Harper, but no one else had better give him a hard time. Harper did not seem pleased with the attorneys' abrasive attitudes. The cats had never before seen him really mad. They watched, highly entertained, kneading their claws against the clay tiles, as Harper worked the two attorneys over. They watched him back the lawyers toward their car, watched the two retreat inside the Lincoln and drive away, watched Harper herd Adelina and Renet into the house. That was the last the cats saw of the Prior sisters until they were escorted out the front door an hour later to a patrol car, where they were locked in the back behind the wire barrier. "Like common drunks," Dulcie said.

When the Prior sisters had been driven away, and the cats looked back toward the grove, the forensics team had removed two squares of sod and were lifting out a third, placing it on a plastic sheet, using tools as small as teaspoons. The two men stopped only long enough to pull on protective blue jumpsuits, to tie on white masks over their noses and mouths, and pull on rubber gloves.

Another half hour and the smell of decomposed flesh hit the air like a giant huff of fetid breath. Another hour more of tedious work, and the men had something new to photograph.

Within the carefully excavated grave, an arm and shoulder had been uncovered, protruding from the freshly dug earth, the body misshapen by decomposition. The smell was so strong that even Joe gagged. Dulcie turned away, retching. How could the police stand this?

It took several hours more for the officers to remove the remaining sod, to photograph and measure the body, to bag bits of evidence, and to dust for prints. The coroner had arrived, and later a forensic anthropologist who had been called down from San Francisco; the cats picked up this much from officers talking in the yard, and from the police radio. The sky began to darken, the roof tiles to cool. A little wind scudded up the hills, chill with approaching night. The two uniformed officers who walked the grove searching for additional unmarked graves soon were using high-powered flashlights, and the forensics men fetched portable spots from their cars.

Below the cats, the drive and gardens lit up suddenly, as the house lights came on, aprons of yellow brilliance casting their wash across the lawns and flowers.

Despite the untoward events which gripped the Prior estate, the household routine seemed unbroken. The cats could smell supper cooking, the scent of something meaty and spicy rising from the kitchen, as if perhaps the cook found it soothing to go on with her schedule in the face of confusion and perhaps disaster.

Joe licked his whiskers. "When did we eat last?"

"I don't remember. Seems like weeks ago. Supper smells so good, I'm tempted to go down and beg."

"Hey, we have to have some principles. I don't take handouts from anyone but George Jolly."

The mention of Jolly left them weak, feeling empty to the point of panic.

It was well after dark when the forensics team finished, and when, in the house, Harper's men were done bagging evidence, labeling and packing it and carrying it out to a squad car. Not until the police and the assorted experts had all gone, locking up the main house, leaving four officers on duty, sending the help back to their own quarters, did the cats come down from the roof and head home.

Just this one time, they wished they could have snagged a ride in a police car. They were beat. Drained. Trotting down the hills they were too tired even to hunt. They did find, before they left the Prior estate, enough water on the paving bricks of the stable yard to slake their thirst. When they slipped into the brick courtyard, the Mexican caretaker spoke to them in Spanish. But they stayed away from him, they could smell cyanide clinging around him, pervasive as a woman's perfume.

And even if he hadn't smelled of poison, they didn't need a friendly stranger just now. All they wanted was home and their own housemates, their own cozy houses and something warm and comforting in their supper bowls. The arrest of Adelina and Renet, the beginning of official police work on the tangle of events, had left them worn-out. Their comfortable homes, at that moment, had never seemed so sweet.

"No," Harper said, "there was not enough flesh on the body to take fingerprints. But we have positive identification-there's no doubt the body hidden beneath the turf was Jane Hubble's." Mae Rose was very still, but she was calm; her primary emotion seemed to be her deep rage at Jane's death. Harper had wondered if he was being too graphic for these elderly ladies, but evidently not for Mae Rose. Her clear blue eyes were fixed on him not only with anger at Jane's murder but with a bright, intelligent attention. "It was not only the finger," she said, "but Jane's dental work that identified her?"